Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/48

 and to the gladiators under Spartacus in Italy, is just what will happen to the Red Republicans in France, and to the Chartists in England, should they ever attempt to recover their political and social rights otherwise than by a movement founded purely upon principle and wholly exempt from selfish or merely personal calculations on the part of men and leaders. Upon no other conditions is success possible, as we shall endeavour to demonstrate, with all but mathematical exactness, in the progress of this inquiry.

History has been defined, "philosophy teaching by example." It is in order to illume the future by the light of the past that we prosecute this inquiry. A vulgar belief prevails extensively, both in this country and upon the Continent, that human slavery is almost wholly the work of priests and religion, and that the genius of Christianity in particular is hostile to liberty and progress. Those who hold such opinions are apt to attach an undue importance to the words "monarchy" and "republicanism," and to fancy that there was more real liberty under the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, before Christianity was heard of, than it would be now possible to establish in any country concurrently with the kingly office, and with Christianity being a part and parcel of its fundamental law. Such persons are also apt to suppose that the slavery of ancient times was wholly the work of positive laws, operating by coercion to keep down an adverse public opinion, and to account in pretty much the same way for the abuses and oppressions of our own time, ascribing them almost wholly to individual rulers or governments, and scarcely at all to the ignorance and corruption of the public opinion around them. Believing such notions to be, in a great measure, erroneous and prejudicial to the cause of real reform (which must take possession of a people before it can of a government), we have been at some pains, and shall be at still greater, to make the true origin and character of slavery better understood than they appear to be. In so doing, we think we shall be able to show that an ignorant and unprincipled people cannot have a good or wise government, and that an intelligent, right-principled people would not tolerate, and therefore could not long have, a bad one. If we be right in this sentiment, a reform of public opinion must needs precede a reform of parliament; and as one great object of this treatise is to endeavour to operate such a reform, we shall avoid, as much as possible, mere assertions without proof; and therefore, even at the risk of being sometimes tedious, we shall continue to bring forward facts and details, as we proceed, in elucidation of our positions.

Now, without going into theological questions (which nothing shall induce us to do), let us request a certain class of French philosophers, who are at present labouring to solve the "social question," to ask themselves how it happened that, before Chistianity was heard of, the theory and practice of human slavery had got such a firm hold of the whole pagan world, that not even the slaves themselves ever dreamt of calling the institution into question.

In the middle ages we have had Jacqueries, corresponding with the slave-insurrections under pagan Rome; but it is notorious that,